Tom Udall has released the Senate rules reform package that he will introduce today for a vote, which he believes he can get passed with a simple majority. It includes most of the features that had been bandied about throughout the last couple weeks. Here are the highlights: • Eliminating the filibuster on the motion [...]

Both the House and Senate begin their sessions at noon today. While the spectacle of Republicans reading the Constitution on the House floor (I can’t wait to see the precise moment when Boehner starts crying – I’m calling Article I, Section 4) is amusing, the real action will be happening in the Senate. There, Democrats [...]

Sam Stein had the scoop last night that Senate rules reform could be drawn out for three weeks: It has been widely anticipated that Senate Democratic leadership would make a dramatic attempt on Wednesday, the first day of the new Congress, to revamp the use of the filibuster. But in a brief interview with The [...]

Tom Udall remains determined to change the Senate rules on Wednesday, the first day of the legislative session. The elements of the consensus rules changes remain the same, at least in this account – ending the cloture vote for the motion to proceed, ending “secret holds” (not really a consequential change) and creating the “talking [...]

When I spoke with Jeff Merkley a couple weeks ago about Senate rules reform, he conceded that the Democratic caucus would have to arrive at a consensus set of rules before they would be able to hold together as a caucus and use the Constitutional option to change the rules by majority vote on January [...]

The collapse of the omnibus would not have occurred if there wasn’t a tremendous backlog on the Senate calendar and a need to get to those items. The Senate’s current rules make it very easy for a determined minority to painlessly create crisis moments and work their will on the body, despite a lack of [...]

If you want to know exactly what’s happening on the campaign to change the Senate rules, consult Chris Bowers. Let me say at the outset that I do not expect this battle, even if successful, to usher in a new dawn in Washington where the legislature functions perfectly. Full elimination of the filibuster is not [...]

The latest on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell repeal is this. The Senate needs a legislative vehicle to take up repeal. So the House gutted a bill called the “Enhancing Small Business Research and Innovation Act of 2009,” substituted with the legislative DADT repeal, and will pass it in the House, returning it to the Senate [...]

Whatever you think about the Democrats’ fecklessness, particularly in the Senate, consider: they have been able to get a majority of the chamber this year to agree to repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, the DISCLOSE Act, the 9/11 health care bill, a $250 one-time benefit for Social Security recipients, and dozens of other bills. And [...]

Polls showed this week that a majority of those voting supported eliminating the filibuster by a pretty wide margin. The PPP poll done for the Progressive Change Campaign Committee showed 64% supporting killing the filibuster, with 23% wanting to keep it in place. Democrats wanted it gone with 77% support, and independents favored its elimination [...]

One area of the debate over the Bush tax cuts that seems pretty cut and dried is the estate tax. Right now there is no estate tax for 2010. If we do nothing, it will revert back to the Clinton-era rates of 55% for estates over $1 million dollars (that’s a marginal tax, by the [...]